The Power

by Naomi Alderman

  ‘Don’t you wish,’ she says. ‘Someone’s attacking us.’

  And then he’s wide awake, pulling on his jeans and fleece.

  There’s the smashing sound of glass and metal.

  ‘Stay low to the ground,’ she says, ‘and, if you can, run into the woods and climb a tree.’

  And then someone puts her hand to the central generator and summons all the power that is in her body and sends it hurtling through the machine and the low lights burst into sparks and glass filaments all around the camp and the darkness becomes absolute.

  Roxy hauls up the back of the tent, where it always leaked anyway, through the rotten stitching, and Tunde bellies out, starts for the forest. She should follow him. She will, in a moment. But she pulls on a dark jacket with a deep hood, wraps a scarf around her face. She’ll keep to the shadows, work her way around to the north; that’ll be the safest route out, anyway. She wants to see what’s going on. As if she could still turn anything to her will.

  Around her there are already screams and shouts. She’s lucky that her tent wasn’t on the edge of the camp. Some are burning there already, probably with the people still inside, and there’s the sweet stench of petrol. It will be several minutes yet until everyone in this camp even knows what’s happening, and that it is not an accident or a generator fire. Through the tents, by the red glow of the fire, she glimpses a short, squat woman setting a flame with the spark from her hands. The flash lights her face white for an instant. Roxy knows the look on her face; she’s seen it before. The kind of face her dad would have said was a bad bet for business. Never keep someone on a job who likes it too much. She knows when she sees the single flash of that gleeful and hungry face that they’re not here to raid for what they can find. They’re not here for anything that can be given.

  They start by rounding up the young men. They go tent to tent, pulling them down or setting them on fire so the occupants have to run out or burn. They’re not neat about it, not methodical. They’re looking for any halfway-decent-looking young men. She was right to send Tunde into the forest. A wife, or perhaps a sister, tries to stop them from taking the pale-skinned, curly-haired man who’s with her. She fights off two of them with precise and well-timed jolts to the chin and the temple. They overwhelm her easily, and kill her with a particular brutality. One of them grabs the woman by the hair and the other delivers a bolt directly through the woman’s eyes. Finger and thumb pressed against her eyeballs, the very liquid of them scrambled to a milky white. Even Roxy has to look away for a moment.

  She backs further into the forest, climbs a tree hand-over-hand, using a loop of rope to help her. By the time she’s found a criss-cross place where three branches meet, they have turned their attention to the man.

  He will not stop screaming. Two of the women take him by the throat and send a paralysis into his spine. One squats on top of him. She pulls off his trousers. He is not unconscious. His eyes are wide and glistening. He is struggling for breath. Another of the men tries to rush forward to help him and gets a crack to the temple for his trouble.

  The woman on top cups his balls and dick in her palm. She says something. Laughs. The others laugh, too. She tickles him there with the tip of a finger, making a little crooning sound, as if she wants him to enjoy it. He can’t speak; his throat is bulging. They might have broken his windpipe already. She puts her head to one side, makes a sad face at him. She might as well have said in any language in the world, ‘What’s the matter? Can’t get it up?’ He tries to kick with his heels to get away from her, but it’s too late for that.

  Roxy would like very much for this not to be happening. If she had it in her power, she would jump down from her concealed position and kill them. First these two by the tree – you could get those before anyone knew what you’d done. Then the three with knives would come for you, but you could dart to the left between the two oaks, so they’d have to come one by one. Then you’d have a knife. It would be easy. But that’s not her position right now. And it is happening. No wishing on her part can stop it. Therefore, she watches. To be a witness.

  The woman sitting on the man’s chest applies her palm to his genitals. She starts with a low hum of a spark. He’s still doing muffled screaming, still trying to get away. It can’t hurt too much yet. Roxy’s done this herself to blokes, for both their fun. His cock comes up like a salute, like they always do. Like a traitor. Like a fool.

  The woman makes a little smile appear across her face. Raises her eyebrows. As if to say, See? Just needed some encouragement, didn’t you? She holds his balls, tugs on them once, twice, just as if she were giving him a treat, and then jolts him fiercely, right through the scrotum. It’d feel like a glass spike, driven straight through. Like lacerations from the inside. He screams, arches his back. And then she unbuttons the crotch of her combat trousers and sits on his cock.

  Her mates are laughing now and she’s laughing too as she pumps herself up and down on him. She’s got her hand firmly planted in the centre of his stomach, giving him a dose every time she thrusts up with bunched thighs. One of her mates has a cellphone. They photograph her there, straddling him. He throws his arm over his face but they pull the arm back. No, no. They want to remember this.

  Her mates are egging her on. She starts to touch herself, moves faster, her hips rocking forward. She’s really hurting him now, not in a measured and thoughtful way, not to extract the maximum pain in interesting ways, just brutally. It’s easily done as you get close. Roxy’s done it herself once or twice, scared some bloke. It’d be worse if you’d taken the Glitter. The woman’s got one hand on his chest and every time she tips forward she’s giving him a crackle across his torso. He’s trying to push her hand away, and screaming, and reaching out to the crowd around them for help, and begging in a slurred language Roxy wouldn’t understand, except that the sound of ‘Help me, oh God, help me’ is the same in every language.

  When the woman comes, her mates roar their approval. She throws her head back and pushes her chest forward and lets go a huge blast right into the centre of his body. She rises, smiling, and they all pat her on the back, and she’s laughing and smiling still. She shakes herself like a dog, and like a dog looks hungry yet. They start up a chant, the same four or five words in a rhythm as they ruffle her hair and give each other fist-bumps. The pale, curly-haired man had been stopped finally and for ever by that last blast. His eyes are open, staring. The rivulets and streams of red scarring run across his chest and up around his throat. His prick is going to take a while to subside, but the rest of him is gone. Not even death throes, not even twitching. The blood is even now pooling in his back, in his buttocks, in his heels. She’d put her hand on his heart and stopped him dead.

  There is a noise that is different to grief. Sadness wails and cries out and lets loose a sound to the heavens like a baby calling for its mother. That kind of noisy grief is hopeful. It believes that things can be put right, or that help can come. There is a different kind of sound to that. Babies left alone too long do not even cry. They become very still and quiet. They know no one is coming.

  There have been staring eyes in the dark, but there are no shrieks now. There is no rage. The men are quiet. Over on the other side of the camp there are still women fighting the invaders to drive them back, and there are still men picking up rocks or pieces of metal to hurt the women with. But here, those who saw it make no sound.

  Two of the other soldiers kick at the body of the dead man a little. They scuff dirt up over it, which might be some sign of piety or shame, but leave it there soiled and bleeding and bruised and swollen and marked with the raised scars of pain, not dug into the earth at all. And they go looking for their own prizes.

  There is no sense in what is done here this day. There is no territory to be gained, or a particular wrong to be avenged, or even soldiers to be taken. They kill the older men in front of the younger with palms to the faces and the throat, and one shows off her special skill of drawing crude effects
upon the flesh with the tips of her fingers. Many of them take some of the men, and use them, or simply play with them. They offer one man a choice between keeping his arms or his legs. He chooses legs, but they break their bargain. They know that no one cares what happens here. No one is here to protect these people, and no one is concerned for them. The bodies might lie in this wood for a dozen years and no one would come this way. They do it because they can.

  In the hour before dawn, they are tired, but the power coursing through them, and the powder, and the things they’ve done turn their eyes red and they cannot sleep. Roxy has not moved for hours. Her limbs are sore and her ribs grind and her scar is yet jagged across her collarbone. She feels exhausted by what she has seen, as if the very witnessing of it had been physical labour.

  She hears her name called softly, and she jumps, almost unseats herself from the tree, her nerves are so jangled and her mind so confused. Since the thing that happened, she forgets sometimes, now, who she is. She needs someone to remind her. She looks to her left and right, and then sees him. Two trees over, Tunde is still alive. He’s lashed himself to a branch with three coils of rope, but, spotting her in the pre-dawn light, he starts to untie himself. After this night he looks like home to her and she can tell she looks the same to him. Something familiar and secure in all of this.

  He climbs a little higher, where the branches meet and mingle, and hauls himself hand over hand towards her, finally dropping down softly in the little perch she’s found. She’s well hidden in a place where two great limbs of the tree meet, making a little nest of a thick branch that one person can rest their back on while the other leans on them. He drops down on to her – he’s taken some injury, she can tell, in the night; he’s broken something at his shoulder – and they lie heavily together. He reaches for her hand. Interlaces his fingers with hers to keep them steady. They are both afraid. He smells fresh, like something green and budding.

  He says, ‘I thought you were dead, when you didn’t follow me.’

  She says, ‘Don’t speak too soon. Could still be dead tonight.’

  He makes a little rough breath, a sign in place of a laugh. He mutters, ‘This also has been one of the dark places of the earth.’

  They both fall, dazed, for a few minutes into a staring trance a little like sleep. They should move, but the presence of a familiar body is too comforting to give up, for a moment.

  When they blink, there is someone in this tree just beneath them. A woman in green fatigues, one hand in an army gauntlet, three fingers sparking as she climbs. She’s shouting back down to someone on the ground. She’s using her flashes to peer up through the trees, to burn the leaves. It’s still dark enough that she can’t see.

  Roxy remembers a time she and a couple of the girls heard there was a woman beating up her boyfriend in the street. It had to be stopped; you can’t let that kind of thing keep on if you own a place. By the time they got there it was just her, drunk, railing around the street, shouting and swearing. They found him in the end, hiding in the cupboard under the stairs and although they tried to be good and kind Roxy thought in her heart, Why didn’t you fight back? Why didn’t you try? You could have found a frying pan to hit her with. You could have found a spade. What good did you think hiding was going to do? And here she is. Hiding. Like a man. She’s not sure what she is any more.

  Tunde is resting on her, his eyes open, his body tense. He’s seen the soldier, too. He stays still. Roxy stays still. They’re concealed here, even as the dawn brings on more danger. If the soldier gives up, they could be safe.

  The woman climbs a little higher in the tree. She’s setting fire to the lower branches, though for now they flare and then smoulder out. There’s been rain recently. That’s lucky. One of her mates throws her up a long metal baton. They’ve had fun with this. Inserting it and setting it crackling. She starts to sweep the upper boughs of the next tree over with this rod. No hiding place is perfect.

  The woman makes a swift jab, too close to Roxy and Tunde, too close. The tip of it ends no more than two arm’s reaches away from his face. When the woman raises her hand, Roxy can smell her. The yellow scent of sweat, the acid smell of the Glitter metabolizing through the skin, the peppery-radish of the power itself, in use. The combination as familiar as Roxy’s own skin. A woman with her strength up and no ability to contain it.

  Tunde whispers to her, ‘Just shock her, once. It conducts both ways. When the pole comes towards us next time, grab it and shock her very hard. She’ll fall to the floor. The others will have to look after her. We can get away.’

  Roxy shakes her head, and there are tears in her eyes, and Tunde has a sudden feeling as if his heart has opened, as if the wires around his chest have all at once unfurled.

  He has an idea of something. He thinks of the scar he’s caught sight of at the edge of her collarbone, how protective of it she is. And how she’s bargained and threatened and charmed and yet … has he seen her … has she ever hurt anyone yet in his presence since she found him in the cage? Why was she hiding in the jungle, she a Monke, she the strongest there ever was? He had never thought of this before. He hasn’t imagined for years what a woman could be without this thing or how she could have it taken from her.

  The woman reaches with her rod again. The tip catches the back of Roxy’s shoulder, sending an iron nail of pain into her, but she remains silent.

  Tunde looks around. Beneath the tree they’re hiding in there is only marshy ground. Behind them are the remains of several stomped-flat tents and three women toying with a young man who is at his very limit. Ahead and to the right there is the burned-out generator and, half concealed by branches, an empty metal gasoline drum they’ve used as a rain collector. If it’s full, it’s no use to them. But it might be empty.

  The woman is calling back to her friends, who are shouting up words of encouragement to her. They found someone hiding in one of the trees towards the entrance of the camp. They’re looking for more. Tunde shifts position carefully. Movement will catch the soldiers’ eyes, and then they’ll be dead. They only need the soldiers distracted for a few minutes, just enough to get away. He reaches into his backpack, rootles his fingers through to an internal pocket and pulls out three canisters of film. Roxy is breathing softly, watching him. She can tell from the way he’s looking what he’s going to try. He lets his right arm drop, like a vine detached from the tree, like nothing. He hefts the film canister in it and skims it towards the oil drum.

  Nothing. The throw was too short. The canister has thumped into the soft earth, dead as blood. The woman is climbing again, and making those broad sweeps with the metal rod. He takes up another film canister; this one’s heavier than the other and for a moment he’s puzzled as to why. Then he remembers – this is the one he put his American change into. As if he’d ever use those pennies again. It almost makes him laugh. But it’s good, it’s heavy. It’ll fly better. He has the momentary urge to bring it to his lips, like one of his uncles used to with a betting slip when it was neck and neck and his whole body was tense like the racehorses on the screen. Go on, thing. Fly for me.

  He lets his hand dangle. He pendulums it back and forth once, twice, three times. Go on. Come on. You want it. He lets it fly.

  The clang, when it comes, is so much louder than he’d expected. The canister had hit just at the rim. The noise means the vessel cannot be full of water. It is wild; the oil drum reverberates, it sounds intentional, like someone announcing their arrival. Heads turn across the camp. Now, now. Quickly, he does it again. Another canister, this one packed with matches against the wet. Heavy enough. Another wild gong. Now it seems like there must be someone there, someone making a stand. Some idiot calling the hurricane to descend on her.

  They come, quick, from around the camp. Roxy has time to pull a thick stump of branch off the tree, hurling it towards the oil drum to make one more bang and shout of metal before they’re close enough to see what’s happening. The woman who was so nearly on her scrambles
down through the branches of the tree in her rush to be the first to pull up whichever fool it is who thought they could stand against these forces.

  Tunde’s whole body is aching now; there is no differentiation between the sources of pain, the cramp and the broken bones, and there’s little enough space between him and Roxy that when he looks down he can see her wound and scarring, and it hurts him as if the line had been cut along his own body. He stretches himself by the arms, feeling with his feet for the broad lower branch. Runs along it. Roxy’s doing the same. They drop down, hoping that the cover is enough to hide the shape of movement from the women in the camp.

  Stumbling through the marshy earth, Tunde risks one single look back, and Roxy follows his gaze, to see if the soldiers have tired of the empty oil drum now, to see if they’re after them.

  They’re not. The drum wasn’t empty. The soldiers are kicking it, and laughing and reaching in to lift out the contents. Tunde sees, and Roxy sees, as if in a camera’s flash, what they have found. There were two children in the oil drum. They’re lifting them out. They are perhaps five, or six. They are sobbing, still curled tight into balls as they’re lifted up. Tiny, soft animals trying to protect themselves. A pair of blue trousers frayed at the bottom. Bare feet. A sundress spotted with yellow daisies.

  If Roxy had her power, she would return and turn every one of those women all to ash. As it is, Tunde grabs her hand and pulls her away and they run on. Those children would never have survived. They might. They would have died there, anyway, of cold and exposure. They might have lived.

  It is a cold dawn and they run hand in hand, unwilling to let one another go.

  She knows the way of the land and the safest roads, and he knows how to find a quiet place to hide. They keep running until they can only walk, and still they walk on mile after mile in silence, palms pressed together. Towards dusk, he spots one of the deserted rail stations that populate this part of the country; waiting for Soviet trains that never came, they are mostly home to roosting birds now. They smash a window to pile in, and find a few mouldy cushions on wooden benches and, in a cupboard, a single dry woollen blanket. They dare not make a fire, but they share the blanket, together in a corner of the room.